usually where a girl your age belongs,” he told her, “unless you can persuade me that there’s some reason why you shouldn’t be there. Can you?”
Kendra looked at Molly, clearly waiting for her encouraging nod. When she had it, she said, “I just don’t see the point of going back there, when they’re only going to send me away.”
Just as Molly had anticipated, there was an immediate flash of sympathy in Daniel’s eyes, a quick rise of temper. “Why do you think they’re going to send you away?”
“Because they made all the plans,” she said defiantly. “It’s a done deal. I don’t have any say in it.” She glowered at him. “And I won’t go back there, no matter what you say or what that cop says.”
She bolted out of the booth and ran, but at least this time she headed for the stairs and ran up to Molly’s apartment, not out into the streets.
Daniel turned to Molly. “What do you know about this?”
“Nothing more than what she just told you. I can’t figure out where they’d be sending her that could possibly be so much worse than being on her own in a strange place.”
“Neither can I. And it doesn’t make a lick of sense. They didn’t say a word to Joe about sending her away, or he would have mentioned it.”
He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number, clearly oblivious to the lateness of the hour. “Joe, it’s Daniel. What do you know about the Morrows’ plan to send Kendra away from home?”
Molly couldn’t hear Joe’s response, but she gathered from Daniel’s frown that he wasn’t satisfied by what Joe was saying.
“Ask them,” he said tightly. “Then get back to me. In the meantime, the girl’s not going anywhere. I’ll go into court first thing in the morning, if that’s what it takes to keep you from taking her. Or we can keep this unofficial till I hear from you. Your call.” He nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Molly felt her heart swell at the determination in his voice. When he’d hung up, she smiled at him. “I told her you’d never let her be sent away.”
“Since you knew how that would get to me, why didn’t you tell me yourself? It could have saved us all a lot of time.”
“I’d promised I wouldn’t betray her confidence,” Molly said. “She needed to believe she could trust me.”
“Did you tell her why knowing that would make a difference to me?”
“No. I just asked her to trust me, and you.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve got to tell you, none of this makes a damned bit of sense to me. The Morrows are good parents. Joe wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that.”
She leveled a look into his eyes. “Wouldn’t you have said your parents were good people, too?”
He paled at that. “Below the belt, Molly.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I was just trying to point out that even the best people aren’t without flaws. You can’t know what’s behind a seemingly incomprehensible decision until they give you all the facts.”
He sighed then. “You certainly got that right.”
She studied his troubled expression, then asked, “What was the emergency at home tonight?”
“My brothers decided to pay a visit to my mother, en masse and unannounced.”
“Oh, my. No wonder she was frantic,” she said, feeling a surprising sympathy for all of them. She’d always liked Daniel’s mother, had always felt at home in her kitchen and anticipated a time when they’d be sharing holidays and other family occasions. Even after she’d learned the truth about the past, she hadn’t been able to reconcile that callous act with the warm and gentle woman she knew or even with the far more blustery Connor Devaney. She would have said he was a good man, who loved nothing more than his family.
“How did the visit go?” she asked Daniel.
“There wasn’t any bloodshed,” he said. “That’s the best I can say for it. Patrick stormed out. I have no idea when he turned into such a hothead.”
“He was always a hothead, just like your father. That’s why you two were such a good team. You’re calm, like your mother. That balanced him out. What about the others? Did they stay?”
He shook his head. “Sean and Michael left shortly afterward. Ryan stuck it out the longest, but even he looked tormented by being there and seeing her again. As for my mother, she was pretty amazing. She